Camarillo Community Gardenshttp://camarillocommunitygarden.com
We put the 'Community' in Community GardensSun, 02 Mar 2014 05:13:17 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Carol Haverty Leads Welcome to the Garden Classes March 13 and 20http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/community-gardens/carol-haverty-leads-garden-classes-march-13-20/
http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/community-gardens/carol-haverty-leads-garden-classes-march-13-20/#commentsSun, 02 Mar 2014 05:09:08 +0000http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/?p=1872Carol Haverty Leads Welcome to the Garden Classes March 13 and 20 is a post from: Community Gardens Blog
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Carol Haverty is responsible for creating both private and public gardens in Ventura County

Carol Haverty will be lead another gardening class this month (March). Carol’s current series of gardening classes are being offered through the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Parks District. The classes consist of two interactive sessions meeting on two consecutive Thursday evenings.

The Upcoming Class: Nurturing Seeds

This class with Carol will make you more confident in planting seeds. You’ll learn which are easy to start, learn the ones that are not so easy and those that are (nearly) impossible to grow. After you take this class, you will be able to choose those that will give you the greatest success with the least amount of effort and resources.

Babies and seeds have a lot in common; they need TLC big time when they are incubating and first born. As with a child, helping it to adapt and thrive in a scary world takes some dedication and knowledge helps too. So it is with seeds, many are care free, many are not.

The class will give you lots of tips on short cuts, tools, low cost sequencing that helps your garden babies adapt to being adolescent and then productive adults. We’ll have fun and share our own personal experiences, some humorous, some sad, but in the long run, we’ll understand how nature works, and when we should not intrude.

You will get an introduction to other propagation methods as we go beyond seeds in this series,. The class is divided into 2 parts, held on Thursdays. Interactive student participation requires bringing items to class for sharing and project making.

Registration for all classes: www.pvrpd.org or call 482-1996, cost for each 2 class session $29.00. Pleases refer to Catalog # 9041.101 when registering.

Public access revoked to area of proposed logging on Dec 24. Meaning that the 6 month old White Castle Tree Sit will also be closed to public access to ensure that the forest is cut without hindrance to loggers in what is some of the last of native forest.

Foresters, Legislators, BLM and Conservationists Square Off Over Dwindling Old Growth Forest The Bureau of land management proposed Early Thursday morning, November 21st the Bureau of Land proposed a 2 year closure of 15 miles of public roads in the Roseburg BLM district.

The BLM proclaimed found no significant impact in closing the area to public access. If there are no official appeals filed the area closure will begin Dec. 24th and the 6 month old White Castle Tree Sit will be closed to public access as well to ensure that the forest is cut without the witness of environmental interests and to minimize hindrance to loggers.

Cascadia Forest Defenders (CFD) who have been occupying unit number 8 of the proposed cut have vowed to remain in White Castle despite the closure and say they will continue to protect this heretofore untouched ecosystem from being destroyed. Members of CFD are sitting and physically blockading logging of this ecosystem because they are opposed to the destruction of native forests in the name of bad science.

Unit 8, where the sitters are located is some of the last native forest that has never been logged in this area of Oregon. All of the timber sale is within area proposed as critical habitat for the survival of the Northern Spotted Owl and is in the home range of five different owl pairs. Located in between the ‘dry eastside’ and ‘moist westside’ forests, White Castle is an incredible bio diverse rainforest, with Western Red Cedars, Sugar Pines and swamp ecosystems and is also located within the watershed of Myrtle Creek and the surrounding communities.

When asked what he thought about the closure, Joshua Eng, a forest defender who has been on site for almost 2 months replied, “It’s simple for me. The place has never been logged. Humans have never ruined it. They can go log somewhere else.” The simplicity of his statement goes to the core of CFD’s mission to protect natural forests in Cascadia. When activist Erin Grady was asked if there was a plan to leave before the closure goes into effect she stated, “We don’t intend to let White Castle fall without resistance. We don’t intend to let White Castle fall at all.”

White Castle was purchased for timber harvest by Roseburg Forest Products (RFP), one of the largest privately owned timber companies in the world. RFP has long hurt communities in Douglas County Oregon either by laying off mill workers to outsource their jobs overseas, or now by logging within the watershed of their own people. The watersheds of these lands provide the drinking water to 1.8 million Oregonians. Cascadia Forest Defenders do not intend to see the last of Oregon’s native forests clearcut and anticipate victory.

It’s late summer and the vegetables are coming in- tomatoes, squash, chard, green beans, rhubarb, cucumbers and other yummy stuff!

It’s not too late to plant some late tomatoes!Here is a link to a gardener’s encyclopdeia

Stay tuned for website updates!

We’ve been busy this month. We have signed on 2 new gardeners.

We are sharing our experience of how to create new community gardensWe’re happy to announce that another community garden is in the works, sponsored by the First Baptist Church on Temple Avenue. Make plans to attend their Garden Fair on August 25th!

10am to 4 pm, 1601 Temple Ave, Camarillo

Map to the Baptist Church

]]>http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/community-gardens/summer-camarillo-community-gardens/feed/0Earthday Camarillo 2012http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/earth-day/earthday-camarillo-2012/
http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/earth-day/earthday-camarillo-2012/#respondSat, 14 Apr 2012 01:44:27 +0000http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/?p=1738Earthday Camarillo 2012 is a post from: Community Gardens Blog
]]>The 3rd annual Earthday Camarillo will be celebrated on Saturday, April 21, 2012 at the Camarillo Community Center, located at 1605 E. Burnley Street, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Admission and parking are as free as the wind and the sun.

The theme this year is simply “Healthy Living”.

Earthday Camarillo will again feature activities for all ages, including environmental, community, and educational booths, art and craft vendors, an expanded food selection, the Camarillo White Horses, belly dancers, and live entertainment including Charles “Wsir” Johnson, Mariachi Gallos de Oro, and The Sloppy Joes. Children’s activities include bounce houses, craft activities, storytelling, and a costume parade.

More information is available on the website at www.earthdaycamarillo.com. Updates and schedules will be posted as they happen.

This grassroots event is organized and funded by Camarillo Community Gardens, with support from Pleasant Valley Recreation and Parks District and the City of Camarillo. Sponsors include The Acorn, Camarillo Recycling, Corn of the Sea, Nopalito Native Plant Nursery, LLC., So-Cal Self Storage, and Team Nissan.

]]>http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/earth-day/earthday-camarillo-2012/feed/0Camarillo Community Gardens In the Starhttp://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/camarillo-community-gardens-star/
http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/camarillo-community-gardens-star/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2012 02:22:05 +0000http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/?p=1716Camarillo Community Gardens In the Star is a post from: Community Gardens Blog
]]>The Ventura County Star ran a great article on the garden and our search for new garden locations. They even created a video, shown below:

]]>http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/gardening/camarillo-community-gardens-star/feed/0New Spider Discovered in Ventura Countyhttp://camarillocommunitygarden.com/biodynamics/spider-discovere-ventur/
http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/biodynamics/spider-discovere-ventur/#commentsSun, 27 Nov 2011 00:02:43 +0000http://camarillocommunitygarden.com/?p=1584New Spider Discovered in Ventura County is a post from: Community Gardens Blog
]]>During his recent trip to Ventura County to work on tracking the movement of the Brown Widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus, UCR entomologist, Rick Vetter discovered a spider never before reported in this hemisphere.

Rick is asking the Ventura County residents to help him collect more specimens for a paper he is currently writing on this find. He expects that these specimens may well end up in either the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco or the American Museum of Natural History in New York because of the importance of this discovery. Your work will become a part of entomological history!

Please refer to the image of the spider to help you identify any possible finds. Rick has noted, “The spider is chocolate brown in color and some females lose A LOT of the light marking on the abdomen.”

Toward this end, Rick is asking Ventura County residents willing to help him, to please:

Have a few amber prescription containers on hand.

Search in your yard for this new spider:

under plastic patio furniture

in the indentations under garbage cans

under potted plants that are raised off the ground

under picnic tables

If you suspect that you have found the spider, use a stick to carefully maneuver the spider into the amber prescription container.

Please place a piece of paper towel in the container so the spider has something to hold onto during transport but also enough space to move around some; perhaps a piece that doesn’t exceed 1/3-1/2 of the size of the container.

Please mark each specimen container with the following:

Date and yard location of find

Complete house address of find

Your name and phone number

Please mail your live spider within one week or so of its collection, keeping it out of the heat in the meantime. A padded envelope would be helpful.

There are bobcats living in the barranca just past the condos. First, we had one, then it took a mate, and now there are 2 half-grown bob kittens roaming the hills.

When the first one showed up, we had coyotes, rabbits and squirrels, but not a single house cat on the hill. The adult bobcats have tangled with the coyotes who leave the area alone now. Caring for the kittens has reduced the adults’ range this last year, and the impact on the local rodents has been dramatic.

The bobcats has reduced the quail population considerably, but now we have gone from being over run with rabbits and squirrels to being almost rodent free. A biologist recently said the way you judged bobcat presence was the lack of jack rabbits

An adult bobcat ranges a mile or more in any direction, but the kittens only venture less than a mile. After eliminating everything except the gophers, I expect the kittens to be showing up at the garden along with their parents to help out with the squirrel and rabbit problems.

Another natural predator that should be familiar to you in the garden is the falcon.

We are lucky to have a pair successfully nesting in the area. After creating a more meadow-like yard, open to the sky, the falcons have spent a lot of time working my garden and orchard areas.

Together with the red-tail and red-shouldered hawks and resident owls on patrol, our rodent problems are greaetly reduced.